Maggie, John and Jimmy in the kitchen, where we spent hours sitting by the fire and telling stories about life on both sides of the Atlantic.

Josephine, some of her children and her parents out back of her farmhouse. From left: Josephine, Paul, Oliver, Caithrina, Jimmy, Maggie & Maura.

Jimmy at the 5,000+ year old rock wall discovered by him and other farmers while cutting turf on the bog at Glenree. A professor from Dublin oversaw the subsequent excavation and pronounced it an older farmstead than the famous Ceide Fields, located on the Northern Mayo Coast. It's hard to imagine that people lived on this hill so many years ago, tending to sheep and other livestock much the same way people do today.

The Scalp is a small gorge with a stream. It's quite a beautiful and lonely site about a mile east of Glenree and nearly to the Sligo border.

Behind the house where Jimmy and Maggie are staying with their son Paul. The buildings behind are now used for storing wood, turf and livestock, but they once were the farm's main houses.

A gravestone at Keenagh Church on a typically changeable Irish day. This is where many of Jimmy's ancestors and relatives are buried. The last time we visited, much of the older portion of the cemetary was covered with grasses and vegetation. This time, in winter, the growth was lower and some work had been done to restore the older parts of the graveyard.

This is the deserted village on a mountainside at the northern coast of Achill Island. The seasonal residents abandoned the village during the 1840s famine to be closer to the ocean, where the sea provided fish for sustainance year round. The sheep still find a meal around the ruined walls of houses. It was a stark and beautiful place, haunted by a lost way of life. During our brief stay on the island, there were periodic outbreaks of rain and we woke to hailstone covering the ground like a thin layer of snow.

This trip, we visited only one castle, called Dysert O'Dea (Die-sert O-Dee) near Liscannor on the road to the Cliffs of Moher.

St. Bridget's well is on the road north to the Cliffs of Moher. Our friend Orla from Ennis in County Clare called it "a curious mix of Pagan and Catholic." The entrance to the well is the white arched doorway.

"It breaks your heart," Orla said. "People leave all sorts of things there. Photos of people they've lost. Crutches to thank St. Bridget for a healing miracle. If you go, you must leave a little something." I left a crystal bracelet around the neck of a wooden Virgin Mary toward the waterfall at the back of the shrine. The place ached with people's sorrows and hopes.

This is Siofra (Shee-Fra), the 15-month-old daughter of Orla and Alph. She is a little sprite, which is what her name means in Gaelic.

2/25/00 - More pictures to come when we get back one more roll of film.